


Sex, Drugs, and Sky Squid

by FloriaTosca



Series: The Wanda Wilson Adventures [2]
Category: Deadpool (2016), Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU of an AU, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Background Poly, Banter, Cosplay, F/M, Fights, First Dates, Friends With Benefits, Gen, Insecurity, Laser Tag, Lingerie, Marijuana, Marvel 616 References, Monster of the Week, Ninja, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Open Relationships, Other, Pacific Northwest, Pegging, So much talking, Wade Wilson Breaking the Fourth Wall, a few canon-typical insensitive jokes, a shapeshifting snake ninja, accidental rough sex, all dialogue sex montage, background Wanda/Vanessa, because deadpool never shuts up anyway, because it's deadpool, both Deadpool and Bucky are pretty brainweird, canon-typical traumatic backstories, don't turn into a snake folks, female deadpool, flying cyborg giant squid in this case, fortunately both partners are very durable, hints of sam/steve, humorously inept z-list supervillains, it never helps, neuroatypical character, racebent character, superhero stamina, temporary major injury, violence against cyborg squid monsters, weaponized hangovers, weaponized sugar free candy, weird meta humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 23:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7335823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloriaTosca/pseuds/FloriaTosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Formerly "Tacoma Holiday."  Wanda Wilson may not be any kind of hero, but she keeps getting into situations where she's doing superhero stuff.  (And sometimes doing superheroes.)  It's not easy, but there are compensations.  Featuring blatant disregard for licensing rights, a hot dude, an obligatory ninja battle, laser tag, gratuitous cameos, Sexy Wartime 616 Bucky cosplay, and, as advertised, sex, drugs, and sky squid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Attack of the Flying Cyber Squid

**Author's Note:**

> This story assumes that Bucky and Wanda met under the circumstances of my story "Shared Life Experiences," but takes none of the rest of that 'verse as canon. The first two chapters are mostly gen lighthearted superhero action - the Wanda/Bucky storyline only really picks up in chapter 3.

“Really?” I said, as I watched the cyborg squid monsters rise slowly out of Commencement Bay. “Tacoma? Of all the places on the West Coast you could’ve attacked, you pick _Tacoma_?” I was only in town because the Korean Women’s Association had hired me to deal with an evil ninja clan trying to set up shop in the Lincoln District. But clearly, if Tacoma was reduced to rubble, I wasn’t gonna get paid. So I found a good vantage point near the waterfront and prepared to pull a You Shall Not Pass until the National Guard or Ant-Man or Zombie SHIELD could take over.

Sometimes I miss the days when supervillains stuck to New York and all the Northwest had to worry about were militia types and the occasional renegade Sasquatch or radioactive hipster. Sure, fighting robot Nazi dinosaurs is a lot more interesting than beating up the usual mercenary hired goons, but you get mixed up in too many of these kinds of fights and it’s really hard to maintain your credibility as not-a-superhero. And then people start _expecting_ things of you.

[ _Colossus is never going to let you hear the end of this._ ]

“Ya think?” A cyber-squid took a swipe at me as I jumped off the Museum of Glass skybridge, but I managed to dodge and grab onto one giant cyber-squid arm as I landed. 

“Hey, Priscilla! Found your ancestor!” But unfortunately, there were no big judgy cyborgs to be found here at this point of the timeline. 

[ _Probably for licensing reasons._ ]

The arm was as thick as a telephone pole, but weirdly bendy and rubbery, even with all the cybernetics. Running up it like some parkour ballerina was not gonna work, especially not while I was dodging flailing tentacles - and did I mention that they were _electrified_ flailing tentacles? And did I mention that my healing factor does _shit_ against electricity? It’s not the damage that’s the problem, it’s the flailing and twitching.

[ _Could be worse. You could have a metal skeleton_.]

So I was scooting my way up holding the arm between my thighs like some Lovecraftian mechanical bull, which at least left my hands free to parry and stab things, when in swung Black Widow like she was the goddamn Batwoman. She was using her Widow’s Bites, so she had her hands free and could flip all over the flying cyborg squid monster like it was the parallel bars at the Dunwich Olympics. It was... aggravating. So aggravating that I got distracted glowering at her stupidly graceful ass and almost got scraped off onto the underside of the skybridge.

Romanoff’s tasers and little zappy disks were doing a pretty good job against the squid’s electronic components, but she wasn’t having much luck against the meaty bits. I guess it’s hard to ballet-fu a forty foot long cephalopod into submission. And I knew from my own experience that shooting the damn thing didn’t work, unless you had something considerably more powerful than a normal handgun. The flesh was just too rubbery and dense.

“You got anything to stab it with?” I shouted to Romanoff.

“Working on it!” She shot out the base of a metal cybernetic tentacle-barb, wrenched the blade out of its ruined socket, and then stabbed the squid in the fleshy bit of its own arm with it. 

“You got any idea where these things came from?” I asked. “Secret military experiments, mad scientists, Atlantis, Esoteric Order of Dagon militants? Sea Monkeys gone horribly wrong? Extradimensional aliens from a rift beneath the ocean?”

“ _Pacific Rim_ was-” Romanoff dodged a spray of acid and then lopped off the beast’s acid gland with her shiv. It splashed onto the pavement below and started bubbling and hissing as she caught her breath “-fiction.”

[ _Reality and fiction are all a function of what universe you’re in. Look at us!_ ]

I’d finally scooted my way to the mantle, which offered considerably more solid footing and fewer thrashing cyber tentacles. Unfortunately, it didn’t have to be flexible, so it was better armored than the arms. Now where the hell was that thermal exhaust port? “Are you telling me,” I said, “that Nick Fury _wouldn’t_ have build a fleet of giant mecha to fight giant monsters if he’d had the chance?”

“Nick was more of an airship guy,” she said.

Well, that explained the helicarriers. “So, do you think if Insight hadn’t happened when it did, there would’ve been a fleet of SHIELD zeppelins?” I never got to hear her answer, because at that point the squid rose fifty feet higher in the air, shot out some kind of beam from one end, and blasted a hole in the top of the Hot Shop. “Hey, I don’t like Dale Chihuly, either,” I said, “But this squid has no respect for art.”

“We have to deactivate that beam,” said Romanoff. “If it can blast through steel, it could wreck the entire city.” 

_[We? We?! Holy Bechdel Test, I’m in a Black Widow team-up!]_

“How’re we gonna do that? Crawl up its ass to deactivate the laser cannon?”

“Plasma cannon. And if it’s built like a normal squid, that end’s its mouth,” Romanoff said.

“I don’t know if that’s a relief or not. Less gross, but more chance of getting chewed on while we try to dismantle it.”

“There’s no point in-” she did a gratuitous flip to avoid being flung off, landed, caught her breath, and continued, “-both of us going.”

“Then it should be me,” I said. Romanoff looked sceptical. “Look, I know you’re the hero and everything, but I’m the one who can regenerate lost limbs here.” She nodded soberly and handed me her batons.

“These are fully charged. Don’t be afraid to zap anything that gives you trouble. I will distract it from up here.”

“All right! Onward to glory and squid spit!” I sheathed Bea and Arthur, then waved and blew a kiss with my free hand before heading for the squid’s alleged mouth end. Romanoff rolled her eyes.

The squid’s “beak” was smaller than I expected. No way was I going to be able to crawl in there, and the metallic blade edges looked like they could take my arm off. “Dammit, Ant-Man! Where are you the one time you’d actually be useful?” So I hung on to one of the “feeding tentacles” around the mouth and zapped the beak plates with Romanoff’s baton. There was a small shower of sparks, and the tentacles near the mouth spasmed and almost shook me off, but then the metal beak plates went slack. I stuck one of Romanoff’s batons in the squid’s beak to hold it open and looked in. Okay, that looked shooty. And _that_ looked like some kind of power supply. I drew my gun to shoot out the power source, because no way was I sticking my arm inside this piece of schmuck bait if I didn’t have to. Shit. Out of ammo. 

“Say aah!” I told the squid, as I stuck my arm holding Romanoff’s taser-baton down its throat. I did manage to reach the power source for the plasma cannon, but whatever stunning effect my zap to the mouth had on the beast was overridden by a taser to the cyber-uvula, and I barely got my arm out of its mouth without having it bitten off at the shoulder. Even with my reflexes my shoulder was pretty chewed up. “Motherfu-AARGH!” summed up my feelings pretty accurately. It wasn’t just about my arm. Okay, most of it was about my arm, but about ten percent was the realization that my suit was chewed up, too, and Spandex and leather do _not_ heal on their own and mending them is way more trouble than it should be.

So no shit, there I was, hanging on for dear life with my one good arm, rapidly losing blood, and well within biting range. I clambered up onto the squid’s - shoulder? neck? forehead? - cephalopod anatomy is _bananas -_ and put some pressure on my shoulder while I waited for the bleeding to stop and Romanoff ran around stabbing the squid in anything that looked like a weak point. When I felt my shoulder start to scab over I pulled out one of my swords and got back to work with my good arm.

“Glad you could join us, Deadpool,” Romanoff said.

“Hey, it’s in my union contract! I get a three-minute break every time I almost lose a limb.”

“But you’re good to fight now?” she asked. 

“I’ve got two arms, don’t I?” 

Romanoff accepted this and didn’t try to fuss over me - maybe it was a Russian thing, or maybe it’s because we were still on top of an active monster - and we got back to having a fine time stabbing things and avoiding tentacles. Then the blade tip of the tentacle I was fighting got blown off by a repulsor beam, and holy crap there was War Machine!

[ _What is this, a B-list Avengers reunion?_ ] 

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he said. “I’m your ride off this thing.”

“But what about the monster?” I asked. “I deactivated the plasma cannon, but it’s still capable of flying around and wrecking shit.”

“Tony found the frequency that deactivates all their cybernetics,” Rhodes said. “And believe me, you do not want to be on this thing when the flight generators turn off.” Neither of us could argue with that, so I sat on Rhodes’s shoulders while Romanoff clung to his back like a baby koala, and we flew off. Behind us, I heard an electronic whirr and then a thud-squelch-crunch as a couple tons of calamari and metal hit the museum’s courtyard.

Rhodes set us down in the parking lot of the County-City building, where all the Avengers except Hawkeye had gathered. But not, I noticed, Ant-Man, who actually lived on the West Coast. Maybe he was still en route. San Francisco traffic was notoriously terrible.

“Where’s Hawkeye?” I asked.

“Probably barbecuing,” said Stark. Natasha glared at him. “Okay, disregard that,” Stark said. “Hawkeye is a mysterious man of mystery and none of us have a clue what he does with his free time. Except Natasha, because she has dirt on everyone. Shutting up now.” Something was going on there, but to be honest, if he wasn’t dead or locked up in Superhero Gitmo, I didn’t really care what Hawkeye did with his free time. But I did care that the Avengers had brought their backup sniper instead. Bucky Barnes was standing next to Captain America - in fact, Cap had an arm flung around his shoulder and Bucky didn’t seem to mind it - wearing a more comfortable-looking but much less awesomely fetishy version of his Winter Soldier outfit.

Bucky looked - really good, actually. He still had the hobo-beard and the long hair, but he’d discovered conditioner and hair ties, and he’d gained a little weight in all the right places. His color was better, too, although in practice that just meant that he had the complexion of a well-fed vampire rather than an anemic one. He looked kind of tired and tense, but running around trying to pull Captain Dignity of Risk’s ass out of the fire would do that to anyone. I thought I could cheer him up. I am a very fun person to be around, assuming I’m not trying to kill _you_.

Cap turned toward me, with the kind of earnestness that can only be measured in kilo-Golden Retrievers. I braced myself for another Colossus-style lecture, but all he said was “Natasha told me about what you did today. We really appreciate it.” I swear I heard an eagle call in the background. Okay, maybe it was a red-tailed hawk. Can they live in cities? Falcon’s the bird nerd, not me. But still, Captain America looked at me and the afternoon sunlight hit his hair just so and made him look like some sparkly golden god of freedom and not just a big buff dorky white dude while he thanked me for my service. It was intense.

And Bucky was finally on my side of the continent again, and looking positively edible, but not in a creepy Hannibal Lecter way because even I am not that kinky. And he wasn’t acting like he had problems with people touching him anymore. This could be my chance to finally get myself a slice of that icebox cake. And if he wasn’t interested, well, there are plenty of ways a couple of badass renegade science experiments can make their own fun. But I was getting ahead of myself.

“So, are you guys going home now, or are you gonna stay out here any longer?” I asked.

“Stark Industries is handling cleanup,” Stark said. “The local authorities aren’t really set up to handle this kind of waste disposal and if the feds get called in I’m never going to get a chance to look at that squid tech.”

“The city council and some people at the Joint Base want to talk to us about Extranormal Emergency Preparedness tomorrow,” said Cap. Falcon and War Machine nodded.

“I have business in Seattle,” said Romanoff. Was she going to assassinate a Russian mobster or was she going to the ballet? Who knows?!

Bucky shrugged. “I’m staying as long as Steve is.”

“I’ve got a job in town and I’m gonna be here for a few days. Want to get dinner tomorrow?” I was mostly asking Bucky, but hey, if the Avengers wanted me to take them out for enchiladas, I wasn’t going to turn them down.

“I’m free,” Bucky said.

“Awesome! Still got my number?” Bucky nodded. “Let me know where you’re staying and I’ll pick you up at six. Now, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve gotta deal with this,” I gestured to my suit, “before the bloodstains set.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Korean Women's Association is a real organization in the greater Tacoma area. IRL they run a bunch of social and community services, which has been expanded a little in this universe.


	2. Just Add Ninjas

When I got back to my hotel room, I washed up, put my suit to soak, changed into my civvies, sent a text to Nessa to let her know that I hadn’t been eaten by cyber-squid, and got ready to run some serious errands. First stop: a little strip mall pho shop. Pho tai is the _best_ thing for replenishing massive blood loss in a hurry. I think it’s the iron in the meat plus the fluids in the broth. Sorry, chimichangas. Second stop: Johnson Candy Company, for a generous sampler of their finest sugar-free offerings. Then a few international groceries and a craft store. Then I had just enough time to hit the freeway before rush hour got really bad and I drove up to Seattle to stop in at Babeland.

Now, that sounds like I was either planning a romantic surprise for Nessa or a really spectacular practical joke, but actually, most of it was for work. 

The “evil ninja clan” I’d been hired to take down wasn’t much of a clan - they’d fit into a minivan if you made the apprentices share seatbelts and stuffed a couple in the trunk - but the Korean Women’s Association had requested that I keep the body count to a minimum to reduce the chances of legal trouble coming back to bite them. 

[ _Now, if they wanted that, why the hell did they hire me of all people? I don’t wear red because I’m worried about rich girls in expensive shoes dumping cosmopolitans on me. Am I just the only mercenary in this universe with name recognition because Outlaw and Silver Sable haven’t been in the movies yet?_ ]

But I am a professional-

[ _Really?_ ]

-and if my employers want to pay me NOT to lay waste to my enemies like a sexy eyebrowless goddess of war, then that is what they’ll get. 

[ _Look at it this way: you’re getting paid to troll people into submission._ ]

Now, the most efficient way to go about fighting a ninja clan is to take out the leader first thing, without wearing yourself out wading through the mooks first. But how do you get the little guys out of the way? That was where my totally awesome plan came in.

The ninja had set up shop as a legitimate business - something like tax preparation, that was boring enough that they weren’t going to get a lot of casual traffic snooping around and interrupting their operations. So I decided to send them a nice gift basket on behalf of the Lincoln District Merchants’ Association to welcome them to the neighborhood. Okay, and this was the part where I poisoned all the goodies, right? Or at least drugged them so I could sneak into their lair while all the low-fortitude-save little ninja were passed out?

[ _Nope! Hello, covert assassins, they probably know way more about poison than you do._ ]

Which is why I wasn’t going to try to slip the ninja any poison. I was going to convince them to do it to themselves. I put in big jars of salty and sweet and sour dried plums (prunes, y’all), a few packages of preserved tamarind (an excellent natural laxative, according to the internet), a couple kilos of the spiciest dried pea snacks I could find, a brick of Indian milk fudge in case any of the ninja were lactose intolerant, and a tasty assortment of sugar free candy from around the world, including the famous Haribo gummy bears. The second gift basket held the drinks. Every flavor of soju the big Korean market stocked, and a couple liters of aloe juice to wash it down. All nestled in festive red tissue paper, with a card welcoming Shinobi Tax Service to the neighborhood, and a bug tucked into a crevice in the wicker. I set the baskets on their doorstep in the evening, once the light was dim enough that anyone who caught a glimpse of me wouldn’t immediately realize that I’m about as Asian as Tilda Swinton and I look like I got my skin-care tips from a horny toad. Then I turned on my earbud, picked up some dinner at a Mexican food truck, and went back to the hotel to fix my goddamn suit and plan tomorrow’s assault.

The boss ninja lady, who went by Madam Aodaishō, insisted on inspecting the food like an overprotective parent on Halloween, but she didn’t seem too concerned with the basket itself - or if she was, she missed my bug. Since the food was exactly what it was supposed to be, Mrs. Ratsnake didn’t find anything suspicious, and she left the baskets in the - kitchen? I didn’t have any visual feed, but I heard running water, and who the hell keeps their junk food in the bathroom?

[ _People with very efficient eating disorders?_ ]

The baskets were too far away from the meeting areas to pick up any tactically useful information, but I overheard plenty of clinking glass and rustling wrappers. Yes…

Now that I knew this part of the plan was falling into place, I got back to looking at maps of the neighborhood and local restaurant listings. There was a bakery across the street that was open early for breakfast and had sight lines to the ninja offices. My strategy was starting to take shape, but I still had one big decision to make. People in the Northwest don’t deal with superheroes -

[ _I thought you said you weren’t a superhero?]_

\- I said I wasn’t because I’m _not_ , but I am a superpowered “costumed adventurer,” if you want to get all Alan Moore about it - as often as people in New York. If I showed up in full combat gear, would I get the cops called on me before I even stabbed anyone? 

[ _Hell, this is America. If you showed up as a black woman with a disrespectful attitude and an ominously clanking duffle bag, would you get the cops called on you before you even stabbed anyone?_ ] 

I shouldn’t have worried too much. The proprietor of the bakery was this ancient Vietnamese lady who had probably seen much scarier things than me in her day.

“Good morning,” she said, when I walked into the bakery. This early, the only other customers were a couple of old men playing Chinese chess at one of the little tables. “What’s in your bag?” she asked.

“Copies of _The Watchtower_ ,” I said. “Would you like one?”

The old lady looked at me suspiciously. “Magazines don’t clank. I think your bag is full of guns. Are you a gangster?”

[ _Dammit, the Watchtower gambit always works! She’s good_.]

“Actually, it’s mostly knives.” The old lady did not look appeased. “And I’m not a gangster. I’m on a stakeout.”

Fortunately, she didn’t ask to see my badge. “Okay,” she said. “But I don’t care if the president sent you. If you want to sit in the bakery all day and spy on people you have to buy something. And no stabbing anyone in the bakery! It’s not hygienic.”

[ _Can’t argue with that._ ]

“I won’t,” I promised.

[ _I guess if it comes to it, I can stick to bludgeoning_.]

Then I bought a cup of tea and a pork bun and sat down by the window to watch the street. When I noticed lights coming on in the Shinobi Tax Services office, I ducked into the washroom to put my suit on. Then I left through the back door - which was a real surprise to the employees working in the kitchen - parkoured up to the roof, and settled down to watch the street.

My presents had done their work, and when one little ninja staggered out of the offices on an umeboshi and turmeric run, he was more preoccupied with keeping the searing Pacific Northwest morning sun out of his eyes than with looking upward. When I pounced on him and demanded that he take me to his leader, the kid barely put up a fight. I mean, he swung his bag of hangover remedies at me, but not hard enough that it even broke the jar of umeboshi. 

[ _Pathetic._ ]

When my little ninja buddy let me in through the back door, I got jumped, as I expected, as soon as I was inside. But the ninja guarding the door clearly wasn’t feeling so hot, and I managed to subdue them both with a plastic grocery bag full of Japanese hangover cures. I’d barely gotten those two zip-tied and stuffed in the hall closet - Jesus, technical pacifism is time consuming - when in swaggered someone who actually looked like he’d be capable of putting up a fight. He was pretty young, but taller and buffer than the two mooks I’d just dealt with, and he had the sleeves cut off his uniform top to show off his biceps. The big douchebag was wielding a meteor hammer.

[ _I love those things! It’s so much fun watching your enemies whack themselves in the face with them!_ ]

“I’ve heard of you,” he said, “DP, is it? Does that stand for double penetration?”

I drew my swords. “Wanna find out?”

He kept his distance and took advantage of his reach, while trying to tangle up my swords and disarm me. It wasn’t a bad strategy, but unfortunately for him, it was pretty clear that he wasn’t used to fighting people with enhanced reflexes. Since I was dodging the hammer instead of parrying it, he couldn’t take out Bea and Arthur, and he kept getting thrown off-balance whenever his hammer hit empty air. 

[ _Now you just have to close the gap without getting disarmed or knocked around too much. It’s one ninja frat boy. It can’t be that hard._ ]

Since he wasn’t having any luck trying to disarm me, Ninja Bro aimed lower and tried to take out my legs. 

“ _Skip it, skip it, do run do jump do hop hop_ ,” I sang, as I nimbly bounced and flipped over the giant metal ball and chain as only someone who’d been a preteen girl during the eighties or nineties could manage. “ _But the very best thing of all_ ,” I sang, as I closed in, “ _is there’s a counter on this ball_ -” and, NUTSHOT. Ninja Bro crumpled.

The rest of the junior ninja were no more trouble - the worst thing any of them did to me was throw up on my boots.

[ _Someone needed to lay off the soju_.]

But where the hell was their leader? I really hoped she hadn’t gone off for reinforcements. Not that I personally would have minded a real fight, but the KWA had been very clear that they wanted this done “discreetly.” And ten ninja are not ten times as stealthy as one ninja. Funny how that works. 

With all Madam Aodaishō’s subordinates zip-tied or duct-taped into submission and stuffed somewhere they couldn’t get into mischief, I was free to concentrate on searching the offices. I started singing as I worked, because _apparently,_ down-tempo minor-key acapella renditions of popular songs are really intimidating if you do it right. 

[ _Yeah, somehow that never really worked out for me. Maybe that’s because I’m a mezzo. Too high to be ominous and too low to sound like a creepy waif in the trailer of a horror movie_.] 

“ _I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world, Life in plastic, it's fantastic, You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere, Imagination, life is your creation…_ Hey, Mrs. Ratsnake! Turn off the heat lamp, put down the pinkie mice and come out and fight me! _I’m a blonde bimbo girl in the fantasy world, dress me up, make it tight, I’m your doll_ -HEY!” A dagger whizzed at me from around a corner and thunked against the wall where my head had been a moment ago.

I ducked back against the wall and inched around the corner until I saw her: a middle-aged Japanese woman wearing an aikido gi with black-on-gray snakeskin patterned hakama and wielding a kunai in each hand. 

_[Oh great, she’s got a theme_.]

She had pretty good aim with those little daggers, and if I’d been capable of being poisoned I would have been in big trouble. “What the hell are you doing with poison anyway? Rat snakes are constrictors! If you’re gonna have a theme, stick to it!” Madam Aodaishō was not impressed with my argument, but I figured that once I got within stabbing distance of her I’d have the upper hand pretty solidly, since she didn’t have any visible big weapons. I parried and dodged another couple of thrown daggers - seriously, where was she keeping them all? - and moved in for the kill. Madam Aodaishō dropped the kunai in her hand, smiled, sort of _rippled_ and _twisted_ for a split second, and then, right in front of me, was a giant goddamn Japanese ratsnake. Now, a normal Japanese ratsnake wouldn’t have been dangerous to anyone but Squirrel Girl’s little buddies or Frog Thor, but Madam A. was the only person in the entire Marvel Universe to give a damn about conservation of mass, so I was now engaged in close quarters combat with a constrictor that weighed as much as I did. _Very_ close quarters combat.

[ _I fucking hate grapple checks!_ ]

“You think pinning my arms will stop me? Don’t you know that some of the deadliest predators on earth lack opposable thumbs?” I said.

“Ssshut up!” she hissed.

“Wait! How can you hear me talking? Aren’t snakes deaf?” While I was talking, I found one of my katanas on the floor and nudged it into position with my foot.

“It’sss not that sssimple,” she hissed. “Sssnake sssensesss work differently from-” I never learned how snake hearing worked, because I kicked my katana into the air, then jumped up to meet it blade-first - which Madam A., who was wrapped around my torso, took the brunt of.

“Foolisssh mammal!” Madam A. hissed. “You’ve killed usss both!” Madam A.’s grayish scales were looking smoother and beiger, and her flesh was rippling in a way that couldn’t have been comfortable, but she hung on. 

“No,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you got stabbed worse than me.”

“You talk too much,” she said, and loosened her coils around my arms slightly. I had just enough time to take a deep breath and grab a knife before she wrapped herself even tighter around my ribcage and neck. Now, I could’ve tried to stab my way out before I got too woozy, but Madam A. had a lot of hit points and I had one little old knife. But we were on an upper floor, and there was an open window on the other side of the room. I made a run for it and did a flying leap out onto the sidewalk. Madam A. instinctively tried to grab ahold of something as soon as she realized what was going on, but all that really accomplished was pulling a chair down on top of us.

As I lay on the sidewalk surrounded by broken chair parts while my ribs knitted, I realized that I was not lying on a heap of smashed snake guts, but on a feebly cursing naked kunoichi. 

[ _She must be one of those people like Tiny Muslim Ms. Marvel who can cannibalize their shapeshifting powers for healing factor_.]

“Now why the hell did you go and turn into a snake?” I said, after my ribs had healed enough that it didn’t hurt to inhale. “Don’t you know it never helps?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * "I will not turn into a snake. It never helps." is Rule 34 of the Evil Overlord List  
> * Soju is a popular Korean distilled beverage that is infamous for making unsuspecting imbibers extremely drunk and inflicting hangovers out of proportion to its relatively low proof  
> * Haribo sugar free gummy bears are notorious because the sugar alcohol used to sweeten them can have a strong laxative effect in large enough doses  
> * Umeboshi (salty pickled plums) and turmeric are popular Japanese hangover remedies


	3. The Renegade Science Experiment Assassins' Guide to Dating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda and Bucky have an evening out on the town. No sex yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanda Wilson in this universe is "played by" Samira Wiley, which is why she's 5'3".  
> Also, the one scene wonder z-list supervillain's gimmick involves religious zealotry and bugs.

Surrender negotiations - which in practice meant taking my swords out and promising the ninja that I was ready and willing do it all again if they didn’t back off and comply with my employers’ completely reasonable demands - went smoothly, and we were through by lunchtime. I got a char siu banh mi at the bakery and called Vanessa.

“Hi, honey,” I said in my best Sitcom Dad voice, “How are the kids?”

“Dogpool’s stopped pissing on the floor,” Vanessa said, “But he won’t let Bob on the couch.” Dogpool was a mutt - best guess is boxer/Shar Pei/Mexican Hairless - I’d picked up from another damn secret lab that was experimenting with super serum enhanced animals. He’s a good dog, really. Kinda under-socialized, but it’s not like I’m in a position to judge.

“Pack hierarchies, eh? How is my favorite minion?”

“Bob has been very good. He fixed the shower the other day and now he’s working on reupholstering the living room furniture.”

“He does like to be useful,” I said. “How’s work?”

“Toe Guy’s back,” Vanessa said.

“Is that good or bad?” I asked.

“Good,” she said. “He’s an excellent tipper. And he has all these kind of weird but really tame kinks that he gets super worked up about. It’s kind of cute, really, like he’s a Victorian English guy getting his first look at _bare ankle_.” 

“Aww.”

“How’s the job going?” Vanessa asked.

“I _slayed_ ,” I said. “But not literally. Everyone surrendered, _eventually_. Although the boss turned into a giant snake first.”

Vanessa laughed. “Why do they always do that? Wouldn’t it be better to have opposable thumbs?”

“Sacred supervillain tradition, I guess. Not that I’m complaining. I know I’d rather deal with someone with _style_ than your basic sadistic jackass named after a cleaning product.”

“Aw, but he had such an awesomely punchable face,” Vanessa said. “When will you be coming back?”

“Tomorrow evening, if no more weird shit comes up,” I said.

[ _That’s a pretty big “if” in your line of work._ ]

“It better not,” Vanessa said. “Bob and Dogpool miss you.”

“What about you?”

“I’m finding the strength to go on,” Vanessa said. “I’ve been using all the hot water in the morning and hogging all the blankets at night. But don’t stay away too long. The batteries in my vibrator won’t last forever.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

I heard a muffled thudding noise over the phone. “Shit!” Vanessa said. “I gotta go! ‘Bye, Wanda.”

“‘Bye.”

The bakery had a bunch of local newspapers, so I grabbed all the entertainment sections and browsed through them as I finished my lunch. Where do you take a really hip World War II veteran on a date? 

[ _Bingo? Nazi-hunting?_ ]

I couldn’t find any Neo-Nazis within punching distance - not even an alt-right meetup. But there _was_ a laser-tag arena that was open in the evenings. What’s sexier than chasing each other through dimly-lit labyrinths full of fake fog? And you can shoot people! 

Oh, hey, and there was a place in Hilltop with decent reviews that was doing Blues Night. They had that in the thirties and forties, didn’t they? I checked wikipedia on my phone - they most certainly did. Okay, live music, dance floor, dim lighting, mildly overpriced drinks, decent bar food - a little experimental but no incomprehensible gourmet-fusion stuff that would blow his poor nonagenarian white boy mind - sounds good. But I didn’t bring any dancing clothes.

I hate clothes shopping. Not that I’m a difficult size or anything, except that it can be hard to find pants that fit right if you’re 5’3” and have actual muscles in your legs, but fitting-room lighting makes everyone look worse and really, I do not need any help there. On a good day, in natural light, if I’ve been moisturizing regularly, I look like a cautionary tale for why you shouldn’t scratch your chickenpox. Under fitting-room fluorescents I look like the love child of Freddy Krueger and a lava rock. And none of the stores had Formal Hoodies, so there went my easiest go-to method for not traumatizing any innocent bystanders.

But then I found it. The Perfect Dress. Red and black - _my colors_ \- with a skirt that was full enough for kicking people in the face, short enough not to get in the way, and poofy enough to conceal plenty of small weapons. And it fit!

“Well,” I said, as I twirled in front of the mirror, “How do I look?”

[ _Like a Goth cancan dancer._ ]

I could live with that.

[ _With smallpox._ ]

RUDE! 

The Avengers were camped out in this mansion in the farthest reaches of Lakewood that Stark normally used when he was in Washington on business trips. 

“Why not in Seattle?” I asked Bucky, after I finally found the address -

[ _Who the fuck did the street planning for this town anyway? Cthulhu cultists?_ ]

\- and convinced the security AI that I had legitimate business there. “There’s _nothing_ in Lakewood. Did he want to be close to the base or something?”

“I think so,” said Bucky. “But it’s also a security issue. This place isn’t… exactly a secret safe house, but I think Tony likes knowing that there’s somewhere he and his people can go that doesn’t have Property Of Tony Stark on it in 15 foot high neon letters. And it’s harder to find big lots away from everything in Seattle, even if you have the money. Big cities are a lot more built up.”

“Okay, makes sense, Tony doesn’t want Bill Gates stealing his wi-fi,” I said.

“That’s a … really nice dress, Miss Pool,” Bucky said, a little awkwardly. He looked down at his own outfit. “Should I go and change really quick? You didn’t say what you were taking me out to do.”

“Wear a shirt that buttons and shoes that don’t pinch your feet,” I said. “Or a party dress. I’m thinking midnight blue would be good with your coloring. But no pencil skirts! Something you can move in.”

“Are we going out dancing?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah. And other stuff.” Bucky nodded, ran back into the mansion, and came out a couple minutes later with his hair pulled back into a ponytail and wearing a glove on his left hand, a nice blue button-down, and a pair of fake glasses.

“Pulling a Clark Kent?” I asked.

“I actually got the idea from that crime show Natasha likes,” Bucky said.

“Who says TV isn’t educational?” We both got in the car and I started driving off. “You like Thai food?”

“I… think I do,” Bucky said thoughtfully. “I remember being sent to Indochina - uh, Southeast Asia - during the Cold War. We were up in the hills somewhere - I don’t know what side of what border. My handlers weren’t big on explaining things. We were there for a few months and flying in supplies all the time would have attracted attention, so we all ate local food. Even me. I remember lots of rice. It was good. Better than HYDRA rations, at least.”

I had not been expecting that, but Bucky didn’t seem to be having Vietnam War flashbacks about it or anything, so I decided to take that as a “yes.” “Okay! We’re getting Thai food.”

“Thanks,” Bucky said softly.

“For what?”

“For not… _hovering_. I know I’m fucked up, but I ain’t _delicate_ , and I’m not a time bomb.”

“Bucky, I’m happy to be as insensitive as you like. It’s one of my many talents,” I said.

“You’re a real card, Miss Pool.”

“Please. Call me Wanda.”

Bucky did like Thai food, although the tom yum made his nose run like Niagara Falls. 

[ _That should NOT be cute. Oh, you are so fucked._ ]

Poor white Depression-baby was so distracted by the wonders of world cuisine with actual flavor that it took him ten minutes to notice I was seriously hitting on him. “Hey, Wanda…?” he asked, when he finally realized that I wasn’t running the toe of my boot up his calf because I needed to stretch my legs, “What about Vanessa?”

“She’s cool with it,” I said. “Don’t worry, you won’t be some kind of homewrecker. I wouldn’t do that to Nessa.”

“Good,” Bucky said. “I’d rather deal with a base full of HYDRA agents than your pissed-off girlfriend.”

“Nessa is pretty tough,” I said fondly, “But I bet you could take her if you had to. With prep time.”

“Whose side are you on in all this?” Bucky asked.

“ _Side?_ I’m in favor of whatever gives me the best free show with the lowest body count.”

“You’re a real wolf, Wanda.”

“I am what I am,” I said. “You want wholesome, go talk to Captain America.”

After dinner, we arrived at the arcade right in the middle of a laser tag session, so we had some free time, and I got to see the Notorious JBB react to modern arcade games.

“What the hell?” Bucky said as we walked past the pinball machines.

“Didn’t you have pinball in the forties?”

“We did, but not with-” he gestured at all the lights and electronics and extra ramps and stuff - “all this.”

“C’mon, try it!”

Bucky lost his first ball because he didn’t know how the flipper buttons worked - those were another thing that was different in the forties - but after that he got the hang of it pretty quick. He was hilariously focused about it, too, watching the balls like a cat after a laser pointer. I wanted to introduce him to Skee-Ball -

[ _the most seductive of all arcade games_ ]

-but we didn’t have time before the beginning of the new laser tag session.

Bucky turned out to be terrifyingly good at laser tag, once he got used to the lack of headshots. About halfway through the first round he got bored with chasing people around the maze and found himself a little sniper’s perch on top of one of the terrain obstacles. One of the arcade employees noticed he was there and walked up to ask him to get down, but turned around and left without saying anything after they got a look at Bucky’s scary intense duck-face.

After three rounds of laser tag against a bunch of civilians, the challenge had kinda worn off for me and I was ready to do something else. “Sick of shooting people yet?” I asked Bucky.

“I’m having fun, but it’s getting a little repetitious.”

“Yeah, this game could really use a better weapons selection. Wanna go dancing now?”

“Sounds good.” So I settled our bill and we headed to The Crossroads.

Bucky was outraged at the idea of paying five bucks for a glass of no-name whiskey and refused to order anything on principle, but he cheered up after he ate most of my plate of sweet chili spring rolls. 

[ _What if all the people who think Captain America is some cranky old man just caught him when he had low blood sugar?_ ]

The music was good, and Bucky was an excellent dance partner, and if everything had gone smooth, I could have danced all night, like that chick in _My Fair Lady_. 

But this is me we’re talking about. So at a little after ten, when the band was in the middle of a slow instrumental, I was resting my feet by the bar, and Bucky was slow-dancing with a white-haired lady closer to his own age group, in walked some guy in a cross-patterned lab coat and steampunk goggles. He was waving a raygun and flanked by a couple of giant praying mantis monsters.

“ _Repent_ , foul denizens of this _den_ of _iniquity_!” he cried. “ _Repent_ while you still can, for the time of _reckoning_ is upon you! I, Doctor Divinity, have come to _cleanse_ this wretched city of _sin_ with my _Prayer Warriors_ , and this _hive_ of _sensuality_ is first on my list.”

[ _Wacko Christian mad entomologist? That’s a new one_.]

While Doctor D. was distracted speechifying, I noticed Bucky sneak through the crowd to get into punching or stabbing range. Now to keep Doctor D. distracted.

“Okay, Doctor _Divinity_ ,” I said. “What do you know about making fudge? Mine always turns out sticky, even when the weather isn’t humid. Any tips?” 

“I am _not_ some _confectioner_!” he ranted. “I am a _warrior_ of the _Lord_!”

“Are you even a Christian for real?” I asked. “Or did you just pick a religious theme to go with your praying mantises?”

Doctor Divinity sputtered with rage and tried to shoot me with his raygun. Fortunately, Bucky cold-cocked him with his metal arm at the same time, and the shot went wide, hit one of the bottles behind the bar, and turned it into the cutest little Barbie-sized booze I’d ever seen.

With their master unconscious, the mantises ran out the door into the night. Bucky grabbed the raygun and anything else that looked weaponish off Doctor D.’s body and handed them to the bartender. Then he noticed everyone in the club staring at him.

“Can we go?” Bucky stage-whispered to me.

“Sure,” I said. Ordinarily, a little incident like that wouldn’t have bothered me, but Bucky had a good reason not to want to be there if any cops who followed the news closely and had a good memory for faces showed up.

“What the hell was that guy’s deal?” I said, once we were in the car. “You think he had something like Ant Man’s tech?”

“Pym Particles would explain the shrink ray and the giant bugs,” Bucky said. “And Scott said some people have bad reactions to over-exposure.”

When we got back to the hotel we watched the last ten minutes of an episode of _Golden Girls_ and then I put on some _due South_. Maybe it’s not that sexy unless you have some very specific kinks, but I thought it was my duty as a Canadian to share it, and since Bucky has spent so much time following around his own square-jawed piece of heroic beefcake, maybe he’d relate to Ray.

Bucky enjoyed the show, although he kept kvetching at Fraser whenever he got Ray into some potentially life-threatening predicament, and he really liked Dief. We made hot toddies with the hotel room’s complimentary tea bags and a bottle of rye, and under the influence of warmth, sugar, alcohol, and nineties Canadian cop dramedy, Bucky started to relax. By the time the pilot was over I was practically sitting in his lap. Damn, that man has thighs like tree trunks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "crime show Natasha likes" is Leverage, and Bucky's ponytail + glasses disguise was inspired by Eliot Spencer.  
> Dogpool exists in the comics, as an alternate-universe dog version of Deadpool and a member of the Deadpool Corps.


	4. The Renegade Science Experiment Assassins' Guide to Getting It On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is where things get porny. For a certain value of "porn."

Bucky and I were lazily making out during the opening credits of episode four when I realized something. “Shit,” I said.

“What?” asked Bucky.

“I think I know why Francis was such an asshole!”

Bucky, to his credit, rolled with it and didn’t ask me what the hell this all had to do with Mounties. “Your Francis, right? The mad scientist?”

I nodded. “Sexual frustration!”

“How’s that work?”

“Okay, the experiments made it so he couldn’t feel pain, but he couldn’t feel anything good, either. So I can understand why he became a mad scientist. Simple pleasures didn’t do anything for him anymore, he had to keep an interest in life somehow. But why was he such a sadistic _dick_ about it?”

“I got the same question about some of my old handlers,” Bucky said.

“What could make a guy who was supposed to be incapable of suffering so pissed off? And then it hit me - no pain, no pleasure… could he even get off since he got his powers? It’d be like trying to jerk off your elbow. And _that’s_ what he was so mad about.”

[ _Could have been worse. Does Department X Trash Party mean anything to you?_ ]

“Shut up, you. This isn’t _Game of Thrones_.” Bucky looked at me, puzzled. “Sorry, JB. I didn’t mean you. But that reminds me. We’re both people who have Seen Some Shit, so - likes, dislikes, berserk buttons? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I think it really helps set the mood when my partner _doesn’t_ panic and hide under the bed.” Damn, it’s weird being the Responsible Person. Normally I just ask people what they’re into and deal with other stuff as it comes up, but normally my partners are only ‘me before Department X’-level fucked-up, not former brainwashed assassin science experiment fucked-up, and normally I’m not fucking people who could throw me across the room and leave me impaled on a crappy hotel lamp if they had a freakout.

Bucky looked thoughtful and brooding in a way that really showed off his eyelashes. “I’m not sure if this is gonna work. Sorry, sweetheart.”

So looking like a cross between Samira Wiley and a scratch-and-dent cantaloupe was going to be a deal-killer after all. I don’t know what I expected. Even Nessa had to get used to this.

[ _Maybe he isn’t turning you down because you have the complexion of a lava rock, maybe he’s turning you down because you’re a goddamn loon. Ever considered that?_ ]

“Not _helping_.”

“It ain’t you,” Bucky said. “And I’m interested and all. It’s just that I haven’t had sex with anyone since before Zola got to me and turned me into this half-robot killing machine. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Bucky, you couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to. Unless HYDRA replaced your dick with one of those disintegrator rays or something.” A moment of pained silence from Bucky. “Fuck, _did_ HYDRA do something to your dick?”

“Not directly. Hell, this is embarrassing.” Bucky looked very intently at the hotel bedspread. “Everything works, physically. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I can be having a fine old time and then my brain says, out of nowhere, ‘Hey, remember what you did in Chile in 1980?’ and the party’s over, as far as my dick’s concerned.”

I wanted to ask what the hell he did in Chile in 1980 that was such a boner killer, but that would have ruined the mood, so I just said “Hey, if that’s the only issue, we can work something out.”

“You’re a headshrinker now?” Bucky said dubiously.

“Fuck no! Falcon got all the psychological expertise in this family. All I’m good at is weaponized trolling. But we can work around your poor traumatized dick, if you’re agreeable.”

“I’m agreeable. What’ve you got?”

“Modern technology!” I rummaged around in my luggage for a moment and pulled out seven inches of red and black marbled silicone and waved it triumphantly. “James Buchanan Barnes, meet Dickpool!”

“What. Is that?”

“C’mon, don’t tell me they didn’t have dildos in the forties.”

“None of the gals I knew were that adventurous. And I’m pretty sure rubber dicks back then didn’t have googly eyes and fake mustaches.”

I looked down. Oops.

“In my defense, I was pretty bored last night. And they do come off.” I peeled off the mustache sticker to demonstrate. Bucky smiled faintly.

“So is that for me to do you if the real thing won’t cooperate?” Bucky asked.

“It could be. Although I was hoping _I’d_ be the one doing _you_.”

Bucky looked surprised at that, and a bit weirded out, but not disgusted. He picked up Dickpool and weighed it in his hands speculatively, sizing it up, and poked it a couple of times like he was testing the texture of the silicone. His expression subtly shifted from apprehensive to mildly intrigued, and he smiled slowly. “Yeah,” Bucky said softly. “This’ll work.”

“Awesome! Now gimme a minute and I’ve got something to show you.” I grabbed the remote and turned the TV off - with all due respect to Leslie Nielsen’s comedic genius, this wasn’t really the time for it - and shut myself in the bathroom with Dickpool and a couple of shopping bags. Yeah, if all went well Bucky and I were going to see each other naked in a few minutes, but I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. I washed the lint and residual sticker glue off Dickpool and left it to dry, then put on the blue satin corset, blue boyshorts, red thigh-highs and gloves, and, finally, the domino mask. Sexy sidekick cosplay is go! “So,” I said, as I walked back into the bedroom and twirled around a few times, “What do you think?”

Bucky was dumbstruck. Okay, he hadn’t ever seen me showing this much skin before, but he knew what I looked like. What was the hangup? Finally, his brain got unstuck, and he was able to react - which he did by falling back onto the mattress and cackling like a loon. Rude! I smacked him with a pillow.

“Ow! Sorry, dollface. You look great. I really like the stockings. It’s just… I’d forgotten… those _fucking_ comics! Who the hell decided to make me the goddamn boy sidekick?”

“Probably Joe Simon or Jack Kirby,” I said. Bucky looked puzzled at me again.

[ _Wrong side of the fourth wall, dammit!_ ]

“Comics writers.”

Bucky shrugged. “So, is this some kind of roleplay business? You pretend to be me, and I pretend to be somebody else? Steve, maybe?” Bucky looked Very Serious in a way that had almost nothing in common with his sniper face and said, in an old-time radio announcer voice, “I hope you brought rubbers, chum, because remember: VD is Hitler’s secret weapon. We can’t fight the Axis without prophylaxis.”

“Cap never said that!”

“Oh, he did,” Bucky said, in his normal voice. “Not in bed with Carter, if he knew what was good for him, but he did make some - I think you call ‘em PSAs nowadays.” He shook his head. “Dammit, I couldn’t remember my own sisters’ names for months after I got away, but _that_ stuck with me.”

“If we’re gonna do roleplaying, I want to be Black Widow,” I said. “Or I could be me, and you could be time-traveling cyborg Jesus. You’ve already got the ‘from another era’ and the metal arm thing going on.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, not feeling very Messianic this evening.”

“Okay, we can have regular vanilla normal-people sex.”

“Doll, I haven’t done much dating this century, but I wasn’t aware there was much that’s normal about either of us.”

[ _He’s got a point_!]

“So if we’re trying to have ‘normal-people sex’, when we both know damn well that we’re not normal, does that mean that _we’re still roleplaying after all_? Woo, meta.” Bucky shrugged. “Either way, we’re gonna need lots of towels,” I said.

“I’ll get ‘em,” Bucky said. He stepped into the little bathroom, and I heard a few seconds of frantic thudding noises and then “Sorry, pal, that stuff doesn’t work on me anymore.” Then Bucky called out “Sugar? I could use a little help here. You got any rope? Handcuffs?”

“Zip ties okay?” I asked.

“Better than nothing.”

I grabbed a pack of zip ties from my luggage - and a knife, in case Bucky’s new friend got any ideas - and walked into the bathroom. The shower curtain was pulled back and a youngish white guy I didn’t recognize was lying in the bathtub looking concussed with a washcloth stuffed in his mouth and Bucky sitting on his chest. “You know this guy?” I asked.

“No, but he knew me. Had some old HYDRA passcodes, too. If Wanda Maximoff hadn’t turned those off for me I’d be in real trouble.”

“You think he’s HYDRA?”

Bucky frowned. “Maybe. But I don’t remember him. Maybe he’s one of those scavengers that New SHIELD are always dealing with.” Bathroom Lurker Guy mumbled indignantly through his gag and glowered at Bucky as viciously as a guy with a splitting headache could.

“What about that baby Black Widow we ran into at the Mexican restaurant? You think he’s working with her?” I asked. Bathroom Lurker Guy did look kind of Slavic.

“Beats me,” Bucky said. “I know some people who could deal with this guy for us. Mind tying him up while I call it in?”

“No problem. I like bondage _slightly_ less than Golden Age Wonder Woman.” Bucky rolled his eyes and got off the guy so I could access his arms, then left the bathroom to make a phone call while I trussed up our new friend.

“Okay,” I said. “Shake your head for no, nod for yes, grunt for ‘it’s complicated.’ Are you now, or have you ever, been a member of HYDRA?” Indignant head-shake.

“Did you plan this to go after Bucky, or are you just a creeper who likes lurking in people’s bathrooms?” No answer.

[ _Should I have phrased it as a yes/no question? Or is he just being an uncooperative subject?_ ]

“And another thing,” I said, after I finished shackling his feet to the faucet. “Are you ticklish?” He groaned.

Bucky and I finally got most of our clothes off and we were making out on the bed surrounded by stacks of folded hotel towels when we heard a knock at the door.

[ _A little early for housekeeping, isn’t it?_ ]

“If this is another fucking wannabe-assassin I am going to stab somebody,” I said.

“It’s probably New SHIELD,” Bucky said. “And the guy in the bathroom didn’t want to kill me. I think he wanted me to kill somebody else for him.” Bucky pulled on some pants and grabbed a knife, then cautiously opened the door after looking through the peephole.

The Zombie SHIELD agents - if they really were SHIELD agents and not a CIA black ops squad sent to kidnap Bucky and turn him into Evil Captain America with freaky MKUltra shit - were a _very_ attractive Black man around Bucky’s apparent age -

[ _Who looks WAY too happy about arresting wannabe bad guys at one in the morning_.]

\- and a not-so-bad-herself serious Chinese woman about ten years older. They got Bathroom Lurker Guy into stronger restraints, all very professional, and then the guy agent let himself fanboy.

“Sergeant Barnes!” he said. “It’s an honor to meet you for real. My granddad had the _craziest_ stories about you and Cap.”

“Wait…” Bucky said. He looked hard at the agent’s face, and then asked “You’re Gabe’s grandson?”

“Yeah.”

Bathroom Lurker Guy was starting to get that “can we _go_ already” look on his face. “Trip,” the lady agent said warningly.

“Wait a minute - you’re Agent Triplett - aren’t you supposed to be dead over in that ABC spinoff show none of the movies acknowledge?”

Bucky, Trip, and the lady agent all looked at me funny.

“Dude, what am I talking about? _Nobody_ stays dead in fanfiction!”

“Sorry, man,” Trip said, “Duty calls. But I’ll talk to you later, all right? You on Facebook?”

“I… don’t have much luck with the social media,” Bucky said. Trip nodded sympathetically. “But Sam has a Twitter.”

“I’ll have to check it out,” Trip said. “Take care of yourself, man. And you too, girl,” he said to me. Then the agents took their leave with Bathroom Lurker Guy. I didn’t know if they were going to deliver him to the proper authorities or detain him indefinitely themselves or use him as part of some unethical spy gambit, and honestly, I did not care.

* * *

 

“You sure you haven’t done this before? You live with the _Black Widow_.”

“Yeah, but… Nat’s more like my sister from different parents. Or different evil brainwashing conspiracies, I guess.”

[ _I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of shippers suddenly cried out in anguish and were suddenly silenced._ ]

“And I don’t think I’m her type.”

“So what IS Black Widow’s type? Blonds? Black guys? She and Falcon would be cute together. Other spider-themed heroes? Probably not, Spider-Man’s like, half her age in this universe. Unkillable Canadians? _Women_? America wants to know! And by America I mean me.”

“Sweetheart, if you want to jaw all night, I’m not gonna stop you, but could you at least, uh, multitask?”

“Picky picky picky!”

“You wanna turn over for this part?”

“Do I have to?”

“What’s the matter, JB? Having too much fun admiring the view?”

“Yeah, actually. You’re the first girl since 1944 who wasn’t a HYDRA medical tech to take an interest in my body.”

“You do say the sweetest things.”

“Okay, this’ll probably feel less like a prostate exam if you jerk off a little.”

“A little?”

“Y’know, not trying to get anywhere, just to keep your dick interested. And tell me if anything hurts. You got that?”

“Yes’m. Crystal clear. Now take me, you big strong warrior woman!”

“Seriously? I’m five-foot-three, you’ve gotta be close to six. Although the swooning and eyelash flutter is cute.”

“Just tryin’ to set the mood here.”

“ _Fuck_ , look at you take it, you are a _champ_ , someday I wanna fist you, give you my whole hand and feel you around me all hot and smooth and- OW! FUCK!”

“Shit! Are you okay, Wanda?”

“I’m fine, Bucky. You can’t hurt me, remember? I just forgot that guys have kegel muscles too. _Damn_ , you’re strong. You think you could break a guy’s dick if you wanted?”

“I don’t believe that ever came up. HYDRA agents who couldn’t keep it in their pants around the unstable killing machine with the metal arm didn’t last very long.”

“C’mon, dollface. One more round?”

“Is this because of your seventy-year dry spell, or did the mad scientists put horny goat weed in your batch of super serum?”

“C’mon, I’ll do whatever you want. I’m in need, here.”

“Okay, but you’re doing all the work. My back needs a chance to heal from your manly super-soldier anklebones bruising my kidneys while you were discovering the magic of prostate orgasms.”

“Sorry, Wanda.”

“‘Tis but a scratch, I’ll be all right in a few minutes. Just lemme get this harness off and you can eat me out, and if you’re _really_ good, I’ll let you ride me.”

“Yes ma’am!”

“Damn, your hair is really soft, what do you put on it?”

“Some stuff Nat gave us. If Steve had his way he’d just buy one of those giant bottles of liquid peppermint soap and use that for everything.”

“You wanna wrap this up, doll?”

“I could go again.”

“I could too. But there’s only one clean towel left.”

“Yeah, that is a… hey! I have an idea. Bucky, have you ever fooled around in the shower?”

“No.”

“Wanna try? Worst thing that can happen is we’ll slip and fall on our heads like a couple of idiots.”

“Falling has been kinda my Achilles’ Heel, historically.”

“If you slip and knock yourself out, I promise to fight off any HYDRA agents who swoop in to take advantage of your concussed state. I can do some very disturbing things with dental floss.”

“Thanks, baby. That means a lot.”

* * *

 

I’m a light sleeper, and I woke up as soon as I subconsciously noticed that I was no longer being spooned by a giant cyborg. Bucky was standing half-dressed on the balcony looking soulful and brooding. If he’d brought cigarettes I’m sure he would have been smoking one.

But now that the endorphins from all that marathon superhero sex had worn off, I ached all over and my skin felt like a dry lakebed. My healing factor always works harder after major injuries like near-amputation-by-sky-squid or almost-death-by-snake-and-defenestration, which is good for not dying but also means that my magic I Can’t Believe It’s Not Lupus gets worse for a little while. I slathered on enough shea butter that I didn’t feel like my skin was going to crack and peel off if I bent too abruptly or smiled too hard, put on my bathrobe so I wouldn’t traumatize any innocent bystanders, and went out to join Bucky.

“Hey, bro,” I said. Bucky nodded, but kept staring at the dark blue horizon. “Bad dreams?”

“ _Da_.” Bucky shook his head violently and slapped his forehead with his meat hand. “I mean yes! Sorry. My brain’s all over the place.”

“Hey, I know the feeling. No problem.” I ducked back inside to grab my weed and lighter, and rolled myself a joint.

Bucky sniffed the air. “Is that reefer?”

“Yeah. Cosmic Purple. High-CBD Indica-dominant hybrid.” Bucky looked at me like I was speaking Sumerian.

[ _Did the guys in Cab Calloway songs know about vaporization versus ingestion or THC/CBD ratios? If they did, would they have cared?_ ]

“It’s supposed to be good for pain and anxiety. Want some?”

“Pal, if it’d calm down any of the shit in my head I’d eat it like spinach,” Bucky said. We passed the joint companionably for a few minutes.

“Weirdest thing,” I said. “I once got hired to take out a HYDRA scientist working on an experimental time machine so she couldn’t use it to help the Red Skull win World War II and plunge us all into some _Wolfenstein: The New Order_ style dieselpunk dystopian nightmare. Turned out not to be much good as a time machine but it did send people to alternate dimensions, so I got caught up in some multiverse crossover event and I met another world’s version of Deadpool.”

“Really?” Bucky said.

“Who was a tall white guy for some reason. But this was before _All-New All-Different Marvel_ so tall white guys were everywhere. At least he wasn’t named Chris.”

“What was he like?”

“A lot like me, you know, kind of an asshole but mostly in a fun way. A little meaner on a bad day. Not any kind of Boy Scout. But he never smoked a hit of weed in his life, as far as I know. Probably had something to do with the Comics Code.” I paused, took a drag. “He also had even worse skin issues than me, but that could just have been because white men don’t know shit about moisturizing.”

“So, if that other version of you was a white man, was the other version of me a Chinese dame or something?”

“Nope.”

“Irish gal?”

“No. Still a man.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you _want_ the other version of you to be a girl?”

“I’m just curious, that’s all,” Bucky said. “What would she look like? How would things be different? You know.”

“You could try googling rule 63 fanart of yourself if you’re that curious.”

“We’re officially not encouraged to look ourselves up on the internet,” Bucky said. “Okay, it’s more like I’m not supposed to google myself because everything I’m going to find is either depressing or embarrassing, and Steve’s not supposed to google any of the Avengers because he kept getting in fights with people who called me a terrorist or called Nat eye candy or said prejudiced things about Sam.” Bucky paused and watched the smoke drift upward in the blue pre-dawn light, and I was suddenly painfully aware of how far away his mouth was. Sure, height differences are hot in theory - I still have “climb Thor like a tree” on my bucket list - but they do make kissing and shotgunning awkward. “Whatever happened to the HYDRA scientist?” he asked.

“Oh, her? She got sent to a world where the dinosaurs never went extinct and died of adult-onset diplodocus.”

“Ain’t modern science amazing?” Bucky said. “Sweetheart, you know if there’re any all-night diners around here? I’m not getting back to sleep anytime soon and I could really go for some early breakfast.”

“We should be able to find someplace. If nobody in this town is catering to the ‘stoners who want hash browns at 5 am’ market then modern capitalism is a fraud.”

By the time we got our clothes on and found a Denny’s within walking distance, the sun was up. And I know for a fact that there is more than one twenty-four hour diner in the greater Tacoma area, but we wound up at a table next to Captain America and the Falcon.

Cap was looking golden and wholesome and smiley, Falcon, sweaty, exhausted, and grumpy. “Hi, Buck,” Cap said cheerfully. “Good morning, Miss Pool. How was your date?”

“Pretty good,” Bucky said smugly.

“I’m glad you were having fun,” Falcon said, emphasizing the “you” ever so slightly.

“Cheer up, Sam,” Cap said. “It’s a beautiful morning.”

“Yes,” Falcon said. “It is a beautiful morning. Which I would have been able to appreciate properly if I hadn’t gotten up at ‘even the birds are still asleep’-dark thirty when my sleep schedule was already messed up from being on the wrong coast, Captain ‘Let’s beat the heat by jogging in the dark.’”

“We did it in DC, Sam,” Cap said, unperturbed.

“Yes, in _DC_ , which is hundreds of miles further south, not snuggled up next to _Canada_. I was stationed at JBLM. I know how the weather around here works. It doesn’t turn into a steam bath as soon as the sun comes up, even in August. Especially not along the waterfront.”

“Did you guys see any more sea monsters?” Bucky asked.

“No, but we saw a couple seals,” Cap said. “They were very cute.”

“And I got insulted by an osprey,” Falcon added.

“Family fights are the worst,” Bucky said sympathetically.

At this point the waitress came back to give Cap and Falcon their breakfasts and interrupted the comedy. “Are those two always this married?” I asked Bucky.

“Sam’s not usually this grumpy,” Bucky said. “And if he’s gonna fight with someone about dumb things, it’ll be with me, not Steve, most of the time. But yeah. They are.”

Meanwhile, over at Cap and Falcon’s table, hostilities had ceased as the two superheroes worked on their breakfasts. Falcon had some semi-healthy thing with eggs and lots of veggies. Cap had ordered half the breakfast menu, but that didn’t stop him from stealing bits of roasted pepper and tomato off Falcon’s plate.

“Did you, Captain America, just try to steal one of my grape tomatoes out from under my nose?”

“Sorry, Sam,” Cap said unrepentantly. “You were talking and I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“Oh, that’s how it is?” Falcon said, and moved in for the kill on Cap’s hashbrowns.

“Damn, you were not kidding,” I said to Bucky. “Hey, Bucky, anything on the 55-plus menu look good?”

“Never heard that one before.”

After we got our food, Bucky turned to me and said “So, I had a lot of fun yesterday.”

“Me too.”

[ _Shit, is this going to end with “and I’d like to do this again” or “but I’m sorry, I just don’t think we’re compatible?”_ ]

“And I want to keep seeing you, but I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer as a boyfriend.”

[ _Wasn’t expecting THAT_.]

“We live on opposite coasts in different countries. Even if you do like to eat crackers in bed, I won’t have time to get sick of it,” I assured him.

“That wasn’t what I was worried about, but thanks.”

“Vanessa puts up with my crazy all the time, Bucky,” I said. “I think I can handle yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! Thank you to everyone who's read this far.  
> Cosmic Purple is a kind of carrot IRL, but I thought the name was just too perfect for a cannabis cultivar.


End file.
